A mission somewhat similar to what you're describing is already in the works.
The Thor Mission
After being released from the observer, the impactor will streak through the Martian atmosphere to an impact site lying between 30 degrees and 60 degrees latitude, in either the northern or southern hemisphere of the Red Planet.
On a lighter note, I suspect that will be the Mission that finally finds life. The Martians have been ok with US sending little robots crawling around in the middle of nowhere. I can't see the Generals in the Martian Planetary Defense Dept being happy with us bombing them (FROM SPACE!).
Commandant: The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors.
I can't say I'm really surprised that he died as the result of an animal. But, I do respect the man for seemingly living life to it's fullest, and having a true passion for something. He died doing what he loved. We all should be as fortunate. Condolences to his family.
If you had the spare $20million knocking around, would you head off to the ISS or would you wait for the cheaper, (safer?) Virgin Galactic service to start trips to 100km up? Virgin costs $200000 per trip... is the ISS trip worth 100 times more?
It depends, if they let me take some special brownies and an mp3 player up there with me, then hell yeah. Otherwise? I'll take the suborbital hop, and eat the brownies at the Spaceport. Also, I believe that they use Soyuz rockets, which are the safest space vehicle currently around, with a 35+ year track record. Against the SpaceShipOne design, which has had what? Three flights?
It's apparently some sort of Alone In The Dark survival horror thing, on the Gamecube.
The major draw for Eternal Darkness was the 'insanity effects'. As whatever character you were playing at the moment ran into more zombies, flying deamons and whatnot, your sanity meter would drop. At first the effects are subtle, bells ringing, small objects moving. However, as your meter neared depletion, the effects would go far further. Attacks from non-existant monsters, random head explosions, and my favorites, the ones that would fuck with the player. The ones I can remember are the game making it look like your tv volume was being turned down, or the channel changes. My favorite is when you tried to save and it flashed "Deleting File" instead of Saving.
-Alex
maybe desktop environments like KDE and GNOME could do something like this. Something simple, like making most often used files, programs etc larger and more apparent, with the less used items growing smaller and smaller with disuse till they disappear entirely and are cleaned up from the system.
Neat idea, there's a small problem. I keep a lot of stuff sitting around for archival purposes, and I'm sure others do as well. I hardly ever access any of them (files or programs), so under your system they'd eventually disappear. That wouldn't be good...
Perhaps instead of just disappearing, a prompt will show up asking you want you want to do. Or just to make things more complicated, things could just be moved into another type of visual [unsorted, rarely used, etc] that gets progressively bigger the more things get added to it, eventually becoming large enough to catch your attention and maybe do something about it.
And even then WHAT IS THE POINT? It seems like people just do this because THEY CAN and are not asking whether they SHOULD be doing this?
That is the whole point, doing it because you CAN. Some people like the challenge involved, seeing if they can 'outsmart' the designers. Others just like to tinker with things.
At the high school I went to, there was a program called "Digital High School". Basically they took about 30 students total and trained them in basic troubleshooting (upgrading, minor computer/network problems, installs and such) and let us be admins for the campus. There was only ONE teacher who acted as a supervisor for it all, and would go out and fix things we couldn't (very rare). This sort of program could be implemented...
The incentive to join this program was you got course credit/honors credit for basically doing... nothing, a lot of the time. Playing CS, helping a teacher find the bloody "A:\ Drive", or sleeping on the office couch was my typical day in that class.
Slashdot Mirror
A 200MW laser would probably violate the Outer Space weapons ban in some way.
A mission somewhat similar to what you're describing is already in the works.
The Thor Mission
After being released from the observer, the impactor will streak through the Martian atmosphere to an impact site lying between 30 degrees and 60 degrees latitude, in either the northern or southern hemisphere of the Red Planet.
On a lighter note, I suspect that will be the Mission that finally finds life. The Martians have been ok with US sending little robots crawling around in the middle of nowhere. I can't see the Generals in the Martian Planetary Defense Dept being happy with us bombing them (FROM SPACE!).
Already been done, sortof.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_(1999_film)
Don't worry about the probe burning up, NASA is sending it at night.
-Alex
Once again, the Simpsons has an applicable quote:
Commandant: The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
Stargate Command has been using these things for the better part of a decade!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqahdah_generator
-Alex
I can't say I'm really surprised that he died as the result of an animal. But, I do respect the man for seemingly living life to it's fullest, and having a true passion for something. He died doing what he loved. We all should be as fortunate. Condolences to his family.
-Alex
If you had the spare $20million knocking around, would you head off to the ISS or would you wait for the cheaper, (safer?) Virgin Galactic service to start trips to 100km up? Virgin costs $200000 per trip... is the ISS trip worth 100 times more?
It depends, if they let me take some special brownies and an mp3 player up there with me, then hell yeah. Otherwise? I'll take the suborbital hop, and eat the brownies at the Spaceport. Also, I believe that they use Soyuz rockets, which are the safest space vehicle currently around, with a 35+ year track record. Against the SpaceShipOne design, which has had what? Three flights?
-Alex
It's apparently some sort of Alone In The Dark survival horror thing, on the Gamecube.
The major draw for Eternal Darkness was the 'insanity effects'. As whatever character you were playing at the moment ran into more zombies, flying deamons and whatnot, your sanity meter would drop. At first the effects are subtle, bells ringing, small objects moving. However, as your meter neared depletion, the effects would go far further. Attacks from non-existant monsters, random head explosions, and my favorites, the ones that would fuck with the player. The ones I can remember are the game making it look like your tv volume was being turned down, or the channel changes. My favorite is when you tried to save and it flashed "Deleting File" instead of Saving.
-Alex
MIT got ahead of themselves a while ago it would seem...
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=276304
God, I'd hate to be the guy who had to deal with that one.
-Alex
Denial of Service attack on the entire internet. ;)
-Alex
As you've noticed, writing See ID isn't all that effective. But it can prove to be pretty funny:
http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/
-Alex
Hopefully, he got fired... from a cannon, into the sun.
-Alex
Perhaps instead of just disappearing, a prompt will show up asking you want you want to do. Or just to make things more complicated, things could just be moved into another type of visual [unsorted, rarely used, etc] that gets progressively bigger the more things get added to it, eventually becoming large enough to catch your attention and maybe do something about it.
-Alex
We have the technology to routinely launch stuff into space. Thousands of commerical flights take place daily...
Yet they can't replicate something that was done 100 years ago.
And even then WHAT IS THE POINT? It seems like people just do this because THEY CAN and are not asking whether they SHOULD be doing this?
That is the whole point, doing it because you CAN. Some people like the challenge involved, seeing if they can 'outsmart' the designers. Others just like to tinker with things.
At the high school I went to, there was a program called "Digital High School". Basically they took about 30 students total and trained them in basic troubleshooting (upgrading, minor computer/network problems, installs and such) and let us be admins for the campus. There was only ONE teacher who acted as a supervisor for it all, and would go out and fix things we couldn't (very rare). This sort of program could be implemented...
The incentive to join this program was you got course credit/honors credit for basically doing... nothing, a lot of the time. Playing CS, helping a teacher find the bloody "A:\ Drive", or sleeping on the office couch was my typical day in that class.